It has been a hard year or so for writers. The world seems to grow emptier and emptier, depletion without replenishment, and now, with the passing of John Updike at the age of 76, death has taken perhaps its biggest prize.

Literature, of course, is not a contest. Still, that Stockholm did not ultimately embrace Updike - a Nobel, why not? - seems too bad, as it probably would have meant a lot to him, and to us as well, to have his erudition and hard work and enthusiastic witnessing of postwar America honoured on such a stage. The news that he died in a hospice not far from his house, and the new ordinariness of this current manner of death, made me wonder what he would have noticed and written about it - "I'm sure it will be discovered he was taking notes," a friend said, hopefully - for he was gifted at describing everything.

Updike's novels wove an explicit and teeming tapestry of male and female appetites. He noticed astutely, precisely, unnervingly. His stories, some of the best ever written, were jewels of existential comedy, domestic anguish and restraint.

And his non-fiction! Even when his essays included a harsh criticism, he politely coiled it, tucked it inside, part snake, part rose, and the reader would feel the bite sprung silkily only at the end - in a balletic allegiance to both generosity and candour. Self-knowledge and self-forgiveness bestowed their own empiricism: he knew, too, what it was to create weak art.

His imagination was eager and intrepid; his sense of purpose, unflagging. When his impressive, underrated novel Terrorist was published in 2006, a younger writer said to me: "Here I am whining on about death, and he's gone out there at his age and learned everything there is to know about trucks!"

When Updike discussed the range and quality of his literary output, "Is there something I've left out?" seemed to be his concern, yet it was set forth merrily. I once saw him asked on stage what classic he had failed to read thus far, and he named Tristram Shandy.

Though it would seem the sort of book he should like, he hadn't been able to get through it. "But I mean to finish it before I die," he said, and then added: "It will probably be what kills me." The audience laughed, and his face turned scarlet, as if this crowd, which loved him, was actually laughing at his death.

He was sometimes dismissed as a Wasp, but his own extended family is almost as racially varied as President Obama's. In his children's book, A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects, he gave "V" not to the usual violin, but to "vacuum cleaner", accompanied by a photograph of what looks to be Updike's young African-American grandson hoovering intently. My own son and I used to study it for long minutes, grateful for the thoughtfulness, newness and personal familiarity of the image, which seemed plucked from our very own lives.

That is what so many readers of his felt, I think: that he had reached in and grabbed a piece of their home - a home in flux and improvisation - and displayed it. Sometimes with glee, sometimes with sorrow. But always with interest. In a review of his early stories, I once quoted a Latvian acquaintance who said that when he encountered Updike's work he felt he was for the very first time reading a writer who "wasn't just making things up".

Later, I received a note from Updike. As with his other notes, his name and address were oddly hand-stamped on the envelope and at the end of the letter, with what looked to be a schoolboy's rubber stamp.